The present invention relates to a protective sports glove, and more particularly to a padded hockey glove having a lateral finger protection pad with a flexible insert to allow flexing of the hand to grip the handle of a hockey stick, and yet to protect the hand from injury.
In sports such as hockey and lacrosse, players require padded gloves to protect their fingers and hands from injury due to the fierce physical contact of the game. Typically, the glove includes padded finger stalls as well as padded portions for protecting the hand, wrist, and lower forearm. The padded finger stalls typically include slits in the padding and in the leather covering the stalls. The slits are themselves covered with leather to give a preshaped bend to the glove.
Furthermore, it is recognized that the forefinger should have additional protection. To meet this need, it is common to provide padding along the exposed lateral edge of the forefinger between the thumb and forefinger. This padding protects the bones of the forefinger and hand from injury as a result of contact to the inner portion of the hand. The forefinger padding exists in various designs including thick and thin padded warts, as well as long and short padded warts. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,497,073 to Deutsch and U.S. Design Patent No. 257,909 to Brine. These patents disclose lacrosse gloves having padding overlying the sides of the hand, extending laterally from the padded pinky portion toward the wrist, and from the padded forefinger portion, between the thumb and forefinger, again toward the wrist. The padded wart protecting the forefinger in these designs extends only partially along the lateral portion of the forefinger and hand. As such, the wart provides only partial protection to the sides of the hand and exposed lateral portion of the forefinger.
In addition, it is known to provide a longer wart which may provide more protection for the forefinger. However, by placing an additional pad on the glove, which is a continuous piece, the flexibility of the glove needed for grasping a hockey or lacrosse stick is reduced.
The flexibility problem of the continuous piece wart has been recognized, and attempts have been made to alleviate this problem by slitting the wart and removing padding at the slit. Each separate portion of the wart then is covered with leather. However, while flexibility is enhanced, protection of the forefinger at the slit is eliminated by the removal of the padding.